Wow, just looked at the 538 website. Didn't realize how good of shape Hilary was in. For some reason it felt like the media was making it sound like she's in deep deep trouble.
Then again, I've been really busy playing the Wii lately.
She's tied in actual pledged delegates...Super Tuesday states and South Carolina are a more favorable calendar to her than Sanders, but if he passes her in nationwide support (and he's getting awfully close, trailing by about 5% in the average of the most recent polls), things can start flipping in his direction real soon.
The superdelegate count is essentially meaningless. I don't think the party with "democracy" in their friggin' name is just going to ignore the will of the voters if Bernie ends up with more pledged delegates at the end of this thing, especially when his supporters skew way younger. Why on earth would you piss off potential Democratic voters for the next sixty years in order to appease the ones that will be dead in the next fifteen? And for a candidate with more baggage that performs worse against the potential GOP nominees in polling? Not going to happen.
I do think she's in an extremely favorable position though and I'd give Sanders maybe a 10-15% chance at taking this thing home. If he passes her in nationwide support not long after Super Tuesday though, I think he'll end up winning the nomination as people don't really leave Bernie's camp once they've decided on the guy...it's generally a constant upward trajectory in nationwide polling for Sanders and I don't see how Clinton can reverse that once he clears 50% and the bandwagon effect begins to take over. In fact, that's entirely the reason why her campaign decided to dump so much money in these early states because they were worried about a few early state victories launching him above Clinton nationally and destroying her campaign exactly like in 2008.
As for the
why of all of this, there's still a ton of Americans that don't have the slightest clue who Bernie Sanders is and what his campaign is all about and that even includes a sizable chunk of the black electorate in South Carolina according to recent polling they did there. In other words, his rise in polls is basically because people don't know who he is yet...the question now is just where exactly is his ceiling.
Personally, I think Sanders is going to need to get out to about a 53-47 lead over Clinton nationally sometime towards the end of March/early April to end up taking this thing home. That would give him maybe a 55-45 lead in the later states on the calendar since they're more favorable to him and that would make up for a lot of the delegate gap he's going to have after Super Tuesday. There's no way Sanders wins this thing simply by passing Clinton in national polling on the way because he's going to have to make up
a lot of ground that he gave up to Clinton in South Carolina/Super Tuesday states. She's going to put up massive victories in the Southern states.
It's all possible, but not likely. As much as I want Sanders to win, I do take an objective look at all of this and the math's going to be dicey.